page_title: Bindo Altoviti
section_title: Patron of the arts
hierarchical_section_title: Bindo Altoviti / Patron of the arts
context_page_description: Bindo Altoviti of the House of Altoviti was one of the most influential papal bankers of his generation and a patron of the arts, cultivating close friendships with artists such as Cellini, Raphael, Michelangelo and Vasari.
  His father was Antonio Altoviti, the papal Master of the Mint and his mother La Papessa Dianora Altoviti, niece of Giambattista Cabo. One of Bindo's direct descendants was Pope Clement XII.
context_section_description: Like other Florentines who provided loans to the popes in exchange for the rights to papal revenues, Bindo prospered. He enjoyed the financial resources to undertake extensive renovations to the properties he inherited from his father and his suburban villa on the Tiber, and to indulge a growing passion for art. Known for, and endowed with, a strong taste for art, he became a patron of the arts and friend to Cellini, Raphael, Michelangelo and Vasari.
  Immortalized in the portrait by Raphael, he gave sanctuary to Michelangelo when he fled from Florence to Rome. Michelangelo had such a high esteem for Bindo, while he despised his rival Agostino Chigi, that he gave him as a gift the cartoon of Noah's Blessing (lost), used for the fresco in the vault of the Sistine Chapel as well as a drawing of a Venus (lost) colored by Vasari. It was also Michelangelo who convinced Bindo not to rebuild, but to preserve, the Santi Apostoli church. 
  Vasari painted the Allegory of the Immaculate Conception for the family chapel. When in Rome, Vasari also used to stay at the Palazzo Altoviti where he frescoed the Triumph of Ceres. When the palazzo was demolished in order to create the Tiber's embankments, the frescos were removed and are now shown in the National Museum of Palazzo Venezia. For Bindo's suburban villa Vasari frescoed a vast loggia called the Vineyard, decorated with statues and burial marbles from Emperor Hadrian's Villa Adriana. 
  Andrea Sansovino also gave Bindo as a gift a terracotta model of the statue of St. James he sculpted for the Duomo in Florence.
caption: Allegory of the Immaculate Conception by Vasari, Altoviti chapel Santi Apostoli Florence
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